Hello,
Sadly, the winter Olympics are over in Sochi, Russia, but thankfully they are also over in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania.
Our house sits on top of a hill with a serpentine ½ mile gravel lane leading to it. It has six 90 degree turns connected by straight-ways of varied lengths culminating in a circular drive. Because of the seemingly daily snows of 5 inches for the past several weeks, traversing our drive has been a bit Olympic. A layer of one-inch thick ice formed atop the gravel creating a bobsled run to rival the one in Sochi. My runs (drives) down our drive have closely matched the Jamaica bobsledders’ covering every inch of the ice (as the Olympic announcers commented) bouncing off the sidewalls of hardened snow and occasionally skidding sideways coming out of the turns. As with the bobsled runs of Sochi, going down our drive may have been treacherous, but going up was nearly impossible causing me to abandon my four-wheel drive truck at the bottom of the hill and trudge my up the hill through the 2 feet of snow that covered the ground. But this weekend our temperatures rose into the 50’s, melting the ice and returning our drive to its gravel beginnings.
We heat our house with propane that is brought by a tanker truck to the one thousand gallon tank that sits behind our garage. When the snow started to fall in the first weeks of January we took a peek at the volume gauge on our propane tank and noticed it was reading 40% full. Not knowing how cold the winter was going to be and seeing that there would be no way for the propane truck to make it up our ever increasingly icy drive, we went into conservation mode (dropping the thermostats in our home to 62-65 degrees and relying on our wood burning fireplace for heat) and kept a vigilant eye on the tank level that was creeping its way down.
This morning as I was sitting in my reclining chair, I heard a rumble making its way to the top of our hill. It was the propane truck! I watched as they parked their truck alongside our garage, and saw them pull the big hose to our tank that they took longer than their normal visit to fill. But alas, now we can release our fears of no hot water, no fuel for our stove, and a flameless furnace, and we can return the temperature of our family room above its toe chilling setting. Alleluia!
“Alleluia” means “praise the LORD”, and I am thankful that with the snow vanquished by the warm temperatures I can rest at ease. But as a Christian I am more thankful for what I read in Romans 8, that “nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” No matter how steep the hill or deep the valley, no matter the lack of traction or depth of ice, and no matter the size of drifts or length of the drive……nothing in all of creation can keep God from reaching us with the power of his love. And with that promise, what need I fear….ever? Nothing! Not that I am looking forward to blizzards not of my doing, to deep pits of my creation, or to the gusty drift piling winds of the world….but unlike my propane dealer facing my bobsled run of a driveway…..nothing will keep God from reaching me. Alleluia!
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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